Adrian Newey designed 2026 F1 car BEFORE joining Aston Martin

Legendary F1 design guru Adrian Newey has revealed that he had started work on Aston Martin's 2026 car before he even signed on to work with the team.

The 67-year-old had a lengthy period of downtime between leaving Red Bull in early May 2024 and signing with Aston Martin in September of the same year, with his period of gardening leave meaning that he didn't actually start working with his new team until March the following year.

Newey wasn't idle in that 10 months 'off work' though, revealing at the team's 2026 car launch event on Monday that he came up with the 'philosophy' for the AMR26 while unemployed.

The situation is not dissimilar to the start of Newey's life at McLaren in the late 90s, having conceptualised the team's 1998 car while on gardening leave at the end of his Williams tenure.

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Newey: Philosophy came from gardening leave time

Joining in 1997 too late to influence that year's car, Newey focused his attention on a 1998 concept which took Mika Hakkinen to the first of two successive drivers' titles. Fernando Alonso in particular will be hopeful that history can repeat.

Speaking on stage at Monday night's launch, Newey said: "The philosophy really, I suppose, came in my gardening leave time from late April [2024], when I was effectively out of the [Red Bull] Formula 1 team.

"We all knew what the regulations were, they were published, so I just tried to sit back and think, 'OK, I've got to just think from first principles with these regulations. What could be a possible solution?'

"I came up with a philosophy and then when I started at the [Aston Martin] team on 2 March [2025], kind of discussed that philosophy with the aerodynamicists and designers at Aston Martin. We all agreed that seemed a viable proposal and that's what we've followed ever since."

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